“My idee,” says Mr. Atkins, and he went into the back room and stirred around for half an hour without saying another word. Catty and I talked about lots of things and told what we was going to do when we got rich and grown up and all that. Catty was going to own some kind of a business that was the most respectable business there was in the world. He hadn’t picked out what the business would be yet, because he couldn’t figure what was the most respectable. I told him being a minister looked awful respectable to me, but he says that wasn’t a business, but only marrying folks on week-days and talking on Sundays, and that there wasn’t any money in it, anyhow, so far as he could see. He thought some about being a judge or a Senator. I didn’t care for either of those ways of earning a living, myself. My leaning was toward something better than either of _them_. I aimed to be a clown in a circus or else a cowboy and discover a gold-mine and all that. I’d changed my mind some. Once I was going to be a circus performer—one of the trapeze kind—and I set some angleworms to stewing on top of the barn. Everybody knows circus fellers git so supple by rubbing angleworm oil onto themselves. But when my worms was stewed out and I went anywheres near them I made up my mind I didn’t care about trapeze-performing if I had to butter myself with that kind of perfume. Just when we were arguing hardest Mr. Atkins came back and says, sudden as a thunderclap: “This here Kinderhook man used to run one of them snide medicine-shows. Wore a silk hat and pulled teeth and had tame Injuns and all.” You could have knocked me down with a puff-ball. Why, this Kinderhook man looked as if he’d never owned anything less than a national bank, and he was the kind of a fellow that you would pick to be the boss deacon of a church and all that. And him pulling teeth and selling snide medicine! Catty slid down off the counter. “Then,” says he, “he aims to cheat the folks of this town out of their money.” “And serve ’em right,” says Mr. Atkins. “That hain’t no way to talk, Dad, and you’d know it if you was respectable. But you’re gettin’ respectabler every day. It ’ll come if you jest have patience.” “Don’t want it to come too hard,” says Mr. Atkins. “We got to stop it,” says Catty. “Codfish!” says Mr. Atkins. “Wouldn’t lift my hand for folks that’s acted like these.” “Dunno’s I care so much about the folks,” says Catty, “but the idea of _anybody_ gettin’ cheated sort of riles me. I’m goin’ to tell folks who Kinderhook is.” “Think they’ll b’lieve you?” says Mr. Atkins. “Not much. Who be you? You’re a young tramp that folks wants to run out of town, and I’m an old tramp that they’re tryin’ to put out of business. If we was to step in and interfere, what you s’pose would happen? They’d put us in jail, most like. They wouldn’t b’lieve our word ag’in’ Kinderhook’s. Better keep your mouth shut, Catty.”